I'm always harping about how writers need to improve their public speaking skills, and I just found out another friend of mine has written a book on the subject. USING STORIES AND HUMOR, by Joanna Slan, is all about grabbing your audience (figuratively.)

Post your most embarassing public speech story here, and the winner will get a free copy.

Last, but not least, I found an extra advance reading copy of FUZZY NAVELhiding under my desk.

Send me a picture of you holding one of my books. The most creative pic gets the copy. Runner ups get something else for free--I have a few dozen magazines with my stories in them.

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I was invited to a largish primary school as part of a reading promotion. There were 700 kids ranging from 4 to 10 years old, all crammed into a big hall with parents and teachers around the walls, and the person who invited me got up to do the intro. It went something like this:

"Morning everyone, and do I have some fantastic news for you today. Hands up if you like Harry Potter!"

(forest of arms)

"And what about JK Rowling, eh? She's a fantastic writer, and wouldn't you all just love to meet her."

(Even the parents and teachers are looking interested now. The kids are barely suppressing their excitement.)

Stuart Neville, my Prince of Darkness, and the writer formerly known as "Conduit," has landed an agent - and not just any agent - but literary powerhouse and legend, Nat Sobel.

His agency, Sobel Weber Associates, New York, represents a few scribes you might have heard of: James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia, American Tabloid), Joseph Wambaugh (The Choirboys, The Onion Field, Hollywood Station), Pulitzer winner Richard Russo (Nobody's Fool, Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs), F.X. Toole (Rope Burns - adapted for the screen as the multi Oscar winning Million Dollar Baby - and Pound for Pound), Robert Jordan (the Wheel of Time series), Tim Dorsey (the Serge Storms series), and many more.

Oh, Nat also loves him some cats. My kind of guy.

And how did Stuart get on the Uber agent’s radar? I’m going to steal a bit of Stuart’s thunder and reveal to my blog peeps that Mr. Sobel scouted him on the Internet. That’s right – a big name agent was scouring the online crime magazines and plucked our man from obscurity. (of course I’ve been singing Stuart’s praises loud and clear since last fall when I first read his work in Agent Nathan’s Bransford’s writing contest). To those of you that don’t believe agents are poking around the world wide web looking for The Next Big Thing – here’s your proof. Here. Is. Your. Proof.

So do stop by and give a big shout out to the literary world’s best and brightest rising star!

http://conduitnovel.blogspot.com/

*shake my booty*

Having already read Stuarts’s manuscript (it already holds the distinction of being only one of four books I liked well enough to finish this year) GHOSTS OF BELFAST, I can tell you it’s nothing by clover ahead for this blessed son of Northern Ireland.

I was taking an earth science course a few months back, and every week I had to attend a lab. We would break up into groups and try to figure out which rocks were supposed to fizz if we poured acid on them. (A lot of fun, actually—the fizzing, I mean, not the class.)

One morning I woke up late, grabbed the first clean shirt I could find and ran out the door. The thing was, the lab always took place on a Thursday, which is the day I *always* run out of my good clothes. (Laundry day is Friday.)

Only after I was out of my apartment did I realize the shirt was incredibly low cut. But hey, it was clean. I shrugged and walked to class.

That day each lab group had to complete a different task, and then get up in front of the class to report their findings. My group was assigned to study the cleavage of 20 different rocks. Yup, you read right. Cleavage - the manner in which rocks most easily break apart. I had to get up in front of a large group of college students (mostly men) and present my group's findings.

“So we found that quartz does have cleavage” (40 pairs of eyes flick toward my chest) “and that cleavage” (more staring) “has about a ninety degree angle. But this cleavage” (this time even the professor looked) “differs from the other rock’s cleavage... (by now, several guys were grinning shamelessly.)

Soon I was sweating and flustered. Desperately I grabbed the textbook from my lab partner and clutched it to my chest.

My big public speaking engagement was at the ripe old age of eight. I read an original short story I had written about a girl traveling on the Mayflower (the originality still astounds me to this day. Ahem.) Of course, this was read at a state convention in PA while wearing an honest-to-God pilgrim outfit, while on television.